Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has told Secretary of Defense Lloyd AuStin that Iranian military preparations show Iran is preparing for a large-scale reprisal attack against Israel, Axios reported on Sunday.
The report said that a new Israeli intelligence assessment says that Iran is likely to launch an attack in response to the Israeli killing of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in the coming days. Israel previously thought Iran might have been rethinking the attack due to US pressure.
Last week, Israeli officials discussed the possibility of launching a “preemptive strike” on Iran if they had intelligence that an Iranian reprisal attack was coming, which would just escalate the situation further.
Sources told Axios that Israeli intelligence believes Iran might launch the reprisal attack before Thursday, the day the US, Qatar, and Egypt said they wanted hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas to restart.